America, Syria and the UN

This is what foreign-policy success looks like

NOWHERE near enough attention is being paid to the way the diplomacy around the Syrian civil war is playing out. Nowhere near enough. The other day I noted that nothing had made me as pessimistic about development aid as the endgame of our failed intervention in Afghanistan. Today let me paint a stroke in the other direction: nothing has made me as optimistic recently about the prospects for a broadly international, pro-human-rights, anti-authoritarian foreign policy that brings together America, the democratic world, and many of the emerging-market/non-aligned countries as what's happening right now around the Syria question. The complete isolation of Russia and China in the Security Council vote on sanctions last week is a watershed moment. It not only, as my colleague writes, cemented the image of Russia and China backed into a corner together in defence of authoritarianism. It also strengthened the tentative cohesion formed during the Libyan revolution last year between the democratic West, Arab democracy movements, and the Arab League.

The Western criticism was echoed in the Middle East, where Arab powers like Saudi Arabia and non-Arab Turkey have turned decisively against Assad in recent months.

"Unfortunately, yesterday in the U.N., the Cold War logic continues," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. "Russia and China did not vote based on the existing realities but more a reflexive attitude against the West."

Arab League head Nabil Elaraby said the body still intends to build support for its plan. The veto "does not negate that there is clear international support for the resolutions of the Arab League," he said in a statement seen by Reuters.

The Security Council's sole Arab member, Morocco, voiced "great regret and disappointment" at the veto. Ambassador Mohammed Loulichki...said the Arabs had no intention of abandoning their plan.

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the opposition umbrella Syrian National Council, called Moscow and Beijing's veto "a new license to kill from these two capitals for Bashar al-Assad and his criminal regime, which just yesterday killed 300 people." The SNC said it held Moscow and Beijing "responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide."

Protesters stormed the Russian embassy in Libya's capital Tripoli Sunday, climbing on the roof and tearing down the flag. Men held up a banner saying: "Libyan revolutionaries are ready to fight with their brothers in Syria."

This is simply extraordinary. At Foreign Policy, Colum Lynch notes that Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, blamed the backers of the resolution for promoting a strategy of "regime change". Mr Churkin seems to have phoned in his quote from a secret city in Siberia where the year is still 2003. There is a world of difference between an American request in the UN Security Council for authority to launch an invasion of a stable country, and a proposal for sanctions under a Security Council umbrella on a regime that is actively slaughtering its own citizens in order to cling to power in the face of a popular uprising. And when the Arab League, the relevant local multilateral group, is strongly behind the proposal, that should settle the question.

What is Russia thinking? The reflexive Russian opposition to international sanctions against authoritarian regimes facing popular uprisings would make some sense if Russia itself feared becoming the target of such sanctions; but that seems a remote prospect, and should it come to pass, Security Council resolutions would be the last thing Moscow has to worry about. It might have made sense in the days when the USSR acted as a vetoing aegis in the Security Council for a worldwide bloc of authoritarian client states prone to periodic revolts. But Russia's remaining client states are a paltry and threadbare lot. Does Moscow really think that sticking its neck out pre-emptively to forestall any potential future sanctions vote in case of an uprising in Belarus is worth earning the hatred and contempt of the youth of the Muslim world? It's a debacle, and strong evidence for Stephen Holmes's argument that the Putin regime, far from a latter-day revanche of efficient Soviet central command, is a dysfunctional and disintegrating mess.

As for China, the vote is yet another in a series of recent strikes against the notion that Chinese "soft power" was poised to vanquish American hard power in the developing world. Over the past three years, China has proven inept and pointlessly confrontational in its push to seize control of the South China Sea. A relatively subtle American policy of offering help to regional countries looking for a counterweight to China, orchestrated with unobtrusive but pointed intent by Hillary Clinton, has proven extremely effective. Against all expectations, Western influence suddenly seems to be winning out even in Myanmar. In southeast Asia these days we are the soft power, China is the hard one, and we're winning.

I could go on, but I'm really just supplying more and more examples to underscore the basic point. For the past three years America has been walking softly, and it's working very, very well. Ten years back, America often found itself isolated, struggling to pull together "coalitions of the willing" packed with small client states. Lately, we have been finding ourselves in the majority, along with the democratic world, while Russia and China front a dwindling coalition of the unwilling. To some extent, this reflects a smart, subtle foreign-policy presence in which we have done a vastly better job of looking at what other countries actually want, and seeing where our interests align, rather than trying to bully other countries into supporting our goals. To some extent, it's luck: the Arab spring happened.

And to some extent, there's a personal factor. Look through the Pew Global Attitudes project data on confidence in the US president. In almost every country, you'll see a dramatic or startling increase in confidence between 2008 and 2011. In Germany and France, George Bush had approval ratings in the low teens in 2008; Barack Obama's approval has never dropped below 80%. In Japan and Britain the shift is nearly as striking. In Egypt, the corresponding figures are 11% and 35%. Even in Russia itself, they are 22% and 41%. When Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice try to win backing for American positions at the UN, the exceptional popularity of the president they represent in other countries is obviously a factor. Commentators who envision Barack Obama running on his foreign-policy successes in this year's campaign generally adduce examples like the assassination of Osama bin Laden and the crippling of al-Qaeda. Perhaps these are the examples that figure most clearly in the American voter's imagination. It would be nice, though, if voters evaluated presidents' foreign policies on the basis of whether they had won the respect of the world and advanced American interests internationally. The evidence of recent American foreign-policy effectiveness isn't that we've shot a lot of bad guys. It's that when our UN ambassador calls the Chinese and Russian vetoes of action on Syria "disgusting", she's speaking for the overwhelming majority of the world, and they are in the isolated minority.

It seems that the author has got an orgasm from the perceived foreign-policy success of the US. He is in a dream world of his own, and he seems to be on such a roll that it is almost a shame to rain on his parade:

1. US foreign policy has not changed significantly in the least in the past couple of years. What has changed is its perception. Take the Syria vote, for example. When newspapers portray the US as being on the side of truth and justice, they forget, or more probably - choose to forget, the fact that the US has used its veto power more than any country in the world. Most recently, in February 2011, it vetoed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, leaving the US isolated. Where were all these trumpeters of human rights then? So much for the three years that America has been "walking softly" that has "worked very,very well".

2. US policy in South East Asia has been anything but "subtle". Despite a promise to reduce weapons sales in the 1972 Shanghai Communique, the US keeps selling arms to Taiwan. It recently announced that it will upgrade Taiwan's fleet of 145 F-16 jet aircraft. Including this deal, the United States, under its "Pacific" president, has sold more than $12 billion worth of arms to Taiwan in just the last two years. This is more than twice the amount sold by the George W. Bush administration in its first term and 75% of the amount sold during Bush's eight years in office.

America has surrounded China with treaty allies - The Philippines, S.Korea, Japan, Australia with military bases all around the region. It recently announced the stationing of 3500 additional marines in Australia.

3. The author, in his excitement, seems to have forgotten the whole Wikileaks and Bradley Manning fiasco.

4. India and China have snubbed US-led sanctions on Iran, a country that is building an imaginary nuclear weapon, and is governed by a a regime that the US insists should be brought down. In this case, the standard excuse of human rights abuses cannot be used, so they are using the excuse for imaginary nuclear capabilities and an imaginary Iranian desire to attack Israel.

5. South China Sea - Bringing up this point does the author no favors. The US has not ratified the The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a treaty that it constantly harps on. It supports "freedom of navigation" only because supporting a free for all is always in favor of the stronger party. That is why it is asking China to be more transparent with respect to its military. It's basic common sense - If I am stronger than you (and if we both know this), it is in my interest that you are transparent, and in your interest (and against mine) that you are opaque. It is always in the interest of the weaker party to hide the true extent of its strength (or weakness).

6. The "notion that Chinese "soft power" was poised to vanquish American hard power in the developing world" is the author's imagination. There was never such a notion. The very idea that China, a country that was viewed rather negatively in the west and many other parts of the world until recently, can "vanquish" American hard power using its Soft Power. China itself has never claimed any such thing. In fact, Chinese leaders have claimed the opposite - that China is still a developing nation and it also needs to increase its Soft Power abroad, witness the dramatic rise of Confucius institutes.

7. Unbeknownst to the author, this is not the first time that Russia and China have "isolatedly" used the double veto. They did it twice - in 2007 and 2008, pertaining to UN resolutions against Burma and Myanmar respectively.

I could go on and on, but I would just be supplying more and more examples to underscore the basic point. ;-)

Hence, while there have been minute changes in American foreign policy over the years, and that it is being seen in a (COMPARATIVELY) better light than during the Bush era (which, lets face it, isn't saying much), extrapolating this to a foreign policy success and "a smart, subtle foreign-policy presence" and as working "very, very well" and not "trying to bully other countries into supporting our goals" is an exaggeration and amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking.

It is an interesting, but deeply flawed article. We have a foreign policy success, when goals are reached.

And what is the goal? As far as I know, the goal is to draw Russia and China into international cooperation and participation in global capitalism. The author seems to be living in the Cold War, when the goal was to isolate and discredit these countries. The West wants Russia and China working within the system, not as excluded opponents.

What we have is a strategic failure, with collateral tactical benefits.

While the serendipitous optics are great, I'm afraid the current consensus around Syria is a well cut piece of window dressing around some good old fashioned power politics. In fact,

1 - The world now realizes that Assad may no longer provide security, the one thing for which he was valued and tolerated.
2 - America (and Israel) would be pleased to bid adieu to a key link in the Shia crescent between Tehran and Lebanon.
3 - Chaos in Syria eliminates the possibility of organized Syrian retribution for an Israeli strike at Iranian nuclear facilities.
4 - The Sunni-dominated Arab League would also prefer Sunni rule in Syria.

As we all know, Bahrain's recent history demonstrates that when America has to choose between human rights and strategic self-interest, it walks human rights quietly back to the basement. And now finding themselves in a strange bed together, the Sunnis and the West are only too happy to cloak their tryst under the flag of human rights. A diplomatic success, indeed.

I think that our delightful woman Secretary of State angrily used the term "impotent" to refer to the two recalcitrant states. This particular word-choice is doubly powerful; coming from a strong women and directed at two weak men, and directed at states in which pride and masculinity are so culturally important.

The end goal is a worthy one to aspire to but lets not run to the praise of the Americans and criticize the Russians. One only needs to look at Palestine and Georgia to see that the US is hardly in it for some ideological reasons of a peoples right to self-determination, governance and freedom. Even in Libya and Egypt it was on the wrong foot and simply pre-empted by events on the ground, and they only moved more firmly against rulers they didnt like vs. those that they did, just look at Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Leave aside moral seclusion, the US is in the same boat with Israel over Palestion, here the Russians have another cause as well, they did not pass a resolution that enabled the bombing Libya, yet it was done under that aegis, any surprise they won't sign up to that con job again? Leave aside moral right and indignation, that is hardly a calculation in politics beyond providing a flag under which to galvanize popular support.

not sure I agree they'll be the next US in 20years when they have a declining population, lack of foreign investment, lack of domestic investment, high unemployment, and an expensive and ailing military. True, this is a resource rich country that if they were able to realize their full potential could rival the US but based on leadership and the culture of Russian society 20 years is not realistic.

Isn’t it a sad irony (and incoherence) that the other countries of the Arab League which now condemn the Syrian regime, domestically are also not a example to be followed coming to human rights?

And about the West’s criticism over Russia and China’s vetoes: so sad that all the worries with the victims are squandered since what really drives the West to rebuff their rivals’ position is politics and not headed by say, humanitarianism.

Insomuch that the West and its automatic alignment with Israel in the conflict involving this latter and the Palestinians has ensued countless victims and it seems the West has never shown been concerned with this death toll that suddenly has with the Syrians. Sickening.

All of this makes a good bit of sense, but there is a very glaring hypocrisy that is bothering me and I must point it out. America trades and is allies with several still-authoritarian regimes, just like Russia and China (in fact, China would be one of those countries the US trades with). I can't help but wonder if the United States would react differently if it was a major trading partner of theirs that was in the middle of what has essentially become a civil war. Though I could cite the United States' initial support for the Mubarak regime, which then rapidly changed during the course of the uprising. Wouldn't the United States be concerned about other countries intervening in a revolution against a regime they do business with, a regime they support.? Let's say for instance that there was a massive uprising in Israel tomorrow, the Jewish population and Palestinian population both revolted simultaneously, and the government did not capitulate. Now let's say that their Arab neighbours demanded an end to violence, and asked for UN approval for intervention (which the vetoed resolution could easily have led to, which is officially why the Russians vetoed it), do you think the United States would remain silent? Not bloody likely, they'd veto that resolution until the situation got so out of hand that they had to eventually capitulate to the demands of the majority of nations. Which China and Russia will have to do if Assad persists in this slaughter. And let's not forget that Russia and China aren't entirely against the rest of the world on this, they are also advocates for peace in Syria.

The storming of the Russian embassy in Tripoli is a perfect illustration of what kind of violent people the Brotherhood are. Tomorrow they may throw acid in your daughters face for wearing indecent dresses.

Russian and Chinese intransigence has certainly appeared to galvanize the world in opposition, but they have also effectively neutered the UN's ability to influence events (specifically the Security Council). How long should the world wait for reform in the UN before exploring other options? We still have pressing issues beyond Syria that require urgent attention (Iran comes to mind).

I think President Obama deserves praise for being competent on foreign policy. But Obama benefits quite a bit from being compared to the previous president, who was terrible on a historic level. I believe Obama, Hillary Clinton et al have done well, but I have a hard time considering their work outside of that context.

Very interesting point of view that I valued and enjoyed however the contribution of the Bush administration is improperly diminished. Like other major historical events progress occurred on many fronts at the same time so it is impossible to point to a singular event as the genesis of the Arab Spring. One of the central events however was marked by millions of purple fingers in Iraq. The liberation of the Iraqi people occurred at a rate of casualties lower than has ever occurred in world history (millions liberated for limited thousands of casualties). Regardless of how apoplectically the liberals come screaming from the woodwork to renounce Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney the liberation of Iraq contributed and played a central role in the Genesis of the Arab Spring.

China's always had a policy of non-intervention though. And considering the country's political discourse, I don't think it's surprising how they voted here. I think the nation's leaders are simply doing what they think is needed to ensure it's own political interests back home (or to hang onto power, depending on how you see it).

The only thing Russia has is natural gas and a lot of land. Their population is suffering heavily from alcohol abuse, making Russia the only country (including third world countries) to see a decline in their life expectancy. With qualities like that, it's almost impossible to conceive of Russia being "the next USA" ever. Also, sorry to be captain obvious, but didn't we already have this competition? It was called the Cold War.

Where's your evidence that the USA's approval is below Bush era levels? I can imagine that Bush had a sweetheart sympathy period for a short while after 9/11, but the idea that Obama in 2011 is less popular than Bush in 2006 - 2007 strikes me as ludicrous.

UN 1441 was a success with the end result of completely destroying the US's credibility. It passed because people wanted inspectors back, they came back and found nothing without ruling out the possibility of something, the US invaded and still found nothing. Lesson learned, don't give the US an inch because they'll take a mile and fill it with 100,000 soldiers.

The basic premise of this is that Bush White House and the current batch of presidential hopefuls is to talk a big game. Not that they'd send diplomats, they just want to yell at domestic audiences about Iran and hope that Tehran hears it.

Obama is more a combination Teddy Roosevelt "Speak softly and carry a big stick." and Tuco "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." and it's working a lot better.

We condemn the actions of Syria (an oppressive regime killing its own citizens) on one hand, while supplying Bahrain (an oppressive regime killing its own citizens) with new military capabilities on the other. Not to mention we also kill our own citizens without due process of law (Anwar Al-awlaki and his 16 year old son) or pass measures by which to detain them permanently without trial (NDAA). We are also not afraid to stand unanimously (with Israel) against the UN and the "International Community," defying recognized norms of Justice and Human Rights, when the stance suits our interests (Palestine's bid for UN membership and the embargo against Cuba). But, hey, at least we finally ended our long, disastrous War on Terror when Osama Bin Ladin's body was dumped into the sea! Who's next?

This event resumes what will happen soon in Syria against the Russians:
"Protesters stormed the Russian embassy in Libya's capital Tripoli Sunday, climbing on the roof and tearing down the flag. Men held up a banner saying: "Libyan revolutionaries are ready to fight with their brothers in Syria."
What losers they are!